Empty House
by prettypurple
Summary: Set during "The Poor Kid": The thoughts of Kenny's parents upon their return home from jail while their kids are in foster care.


_SSouth Park and its characters belong to Trey Parker and Matt Stone._

* * *

Almost everything in the house was the same when Stuart and Carol McCormick returned home: the junk in the front yard, the leaky roof, the broken windows, the TV that only got a few channels, the shabby furniture, the carpet stained with beer and who knew what else, and the rats scurrying around were all still there. But the kids were gone.

This hadn't been the first time that either Stuart or Carol had been arrested, and it probably wouldn't be the last, but this was the first time that their children had been taken from them.

"This is all your fault!" Carol snapped at Stuart as she wiped her eyes.

"How the hell is it MY fault?! The meth lab was _your_ idea, bitch!"

"That's what you said about goin' to those fuckin' cult meetings!" Carol seethed. "And we wouldn't've needed that meth lab if you could just hold down a goddamned job 'stead of gettin' drunk all the time!"

Stuart started to raise his clenched fist, only to hiss in pain and grab his arm. "It still hurts!"

The next thing Stuart knew, he was lying on his back on the couch, with Carol towering over him.

"IS THAT ALL YOU CARE ABOUT, ASSHOLE?! Our babies are GONE!"

"Well...it _does_ hurt," Stuart protested lamely as he sat up.

Carol was crying too hard to hit or yell at him; she ran off in the direction of the kids' rooms, and Stuart felt a small twinge of guilt. It wasn't that he didn't care about losing his kids; he just found it easier to focus on the little pain instead of the big pain.

Stuart found himself at the fridge, staring blankly at the cans of beer and other alcohol among the spoiling food. After getting a whiskey bottle, he slammed the fridge door and slumped down against it. Just looking at all of those cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon reminded Stuart of having to tell the whole country, on live television, that he was "white trash in trouble", but he still needed some kind of booze in his system.

It was Gerald Broflovski's fault, Stuart decided as he drank. In high school, they'd secretly gotten drunk, and Gerald had experimented with ways to get high, but Stuart had mostly stuck to alcohol. Somehow, in spite of his bad habits, Gerald had gone on to become a lawyer, while Stuart would probably never be anything. If only _his_ parents could have afforded to send him to college...

Self-loathing now overtook Stuart. His drinking had caused a lot of problems: violent fights with his wife, being unable to keep a job, his son's immortality...Going to the Cult of Cthulhu meetings for the free beer _had_ been Stuart's idea, though Carol had not objected. How was she to know that whatever happened at those meetings would result in her having to give birth over and over? Maybe it was a good thing that the kids were now living elsewhere; he'd definitely been far from a good dad. Stuart couldn't remember who or what had started his fight with Kevin on the last night that they'd seen each other, but he felt now that he deserved almost getting choked by his own son. Kevin's alcoholism and violent tendencies were probably a result of watching his parents drink and fight, and Stuart had done nothing to stop a two-year-old Kevin from stealing his beer. He'd figured that, as a McCormick, Kevin was bound to get into booze sooner or later, so why bother?

His influence on Kenny had been different, though not much better. From a very young age, Kenny had taken an interest in the _Playboys _and other such magazines that Stuart collected, and Stuart hadn't bothered to stop him for the same reasons why he didn't stop Kevin from drinking.

As for Karen...well, maybe it was better that Stuart kept his distance from his daughter, given the influence he'd had on her brothers.

* * *

It wasn't fair, Carol thought as she wept quietly at Kevin's bedroom door. She and Stuart had tried to be better parents ever since that creepy masked kid started showing up at night. They'd made an honest effort to treat each other and their kids better, but it wasn't easy to break old habits. And they needed the money that they got from dealing meth; washing dishes at Olive Garden didn't bring in much.

Kevin's room had little in it, just his bed and bedside table, both littered with beer cans and wrappers of candy that he had probably shoplifted during the days that he cut school or ran away after serious fights. At the rate Kevin was going, he'd probably wind up being worse than his father, who had at least finished high school. Still, Kevin was Carol's baby, her first baby, and she'd miss him.

As she turned to leave, she felt something under her foot, and saw that it was a photo of Kevin and Kenny on the rollercoaster at North Park Funland, with Kevin grinning and Kenny playing on his PSP. Carol slipped the photo into the pocket of her jeans and moved on to Kenny's room.

Though she knew it was selfish, half-hoped that something would kill him at his new home. At least when Kenny died, he would be reborn to her sooner or later. Now all of the kids were gone, and Carol didn't know if she'd ever see them again.

Carol did not consider herself a bad mother, not as far as her middle child was concerned. She almost always cried when Kenny died, even though by now, he'd died somewhere between eighty and ninety times. Most other mothers in her position would, at some point, probably become desensitized to all of those deaths. She and Stuart had done their hardest to keep Kenny from feeling neglected during that time when they'd tried for another baby, even though Stuart kept getting hurt, Kenny had gone after her with a plunger, and the baby became another incarnation of Kenny. They both tried to get Kenny to apologize to that butt-faced couple for his part in the prank that had tricked them into thinking that their lost son had been found. Liane Cartman probably wouldn't have had the backbone to make Eric apologize for tricking them.

Sitting down on her younger son's bed, Carol tried to remember more stuff about Kenny that didn't involve him getting killed. There was that time that she'd accompanied him to Romania so that he could go to music school...and he'd gotten shot to death in her arms. That one Thanksgiving when Kenny had won a can of green beans...and he'd been pecked to death by turkeys, and the can of green beans had been useless without a can opener. Her Kenny really was a good boy, in spite of some of his bad habits and the stupid stuff he did, and he didn't deserve all of those deaths.

Last of all was the room of her poor, sweet little Karen, the only McCormick who had not become addicted to anything or beaten anybody up...so far. Hopefully, Karen's foster family, whoever they were, would help her to stay that way. Hopefully. Carol had been in a few foster homes as a kid, and, obviously, things had not really turned out well for her. Sometimes she'd been separated from her siblings, and hoped that wasn't the case with her own kids.

Karen's pajamas and princess doll were both gone, and that made the reality of the situation hit Carol even harder. Her little girl rarely went anywhere (if she went out at all) without her doll, almost like how that kid from _Peanuts_ always had his blanket. She was probably scared out of her mind right now, and Carol hoped that Kenny was looking out for her; Carol noticed that Kenny and Karen had become quite close recently, and a kid like Karen needed at least one strong, loving relationship. Karen had suffered from anxiety all her life, and growing up in this kind of environment didn't help. Yes, she was probably better off at her new home. Anything was better than this rat-infested shack.

* * *

Carol went to the room she shared with Stuart and lay down on her side of the bed, staring at the cracks in the ceiling. She heard Stuart come in and felt him sit down beside her, but refused to look at her husband until, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him looking at something in his hand: a drawing that sat on the bedside table in a glittery cardboard frame.

"Honey, d'you know what the hell Karen was trying to draw? It looks like lollipops and an orange popsicle with smiley faces."

"Huh?" Carol jerked up and snatched the drawing away from Stuart. "It's s'posed to be _us_, dumbass! See, there's you, there's me, there's Kevin, there's Kenny in his stupid orange coat, and there's Karen with her little one-eyed princess dolly."

She looked down at the drawing again and burst into fresh sobs as Stuart put his arms around her. Even after so many deaths and funerals and other hardships, the supply of tears never seemed to dry up


End file.
